Coming up on the AID building.
I do not care if my protests made a difference. I do not care if Colin Kaepernick's protest makes a difference, because's not what you create for, that's not what you play for, and that's not what you protest for.
I was watching a man suffocate to death slowly. It's traumatizing for anybody who watches it.
Episode two, Justice for George Floyd.
See him? Is this the room? No?
I think it's at the end of the hall.
Are we really gonna do this? Of course we are. Here was the moment, the moment when a group of concerned students made their final towards the boarder Trustees building. Tensions are high, the reality of what they're about to do is starting to kick in.
The gear for the heights was simple, some water, some food. They purchased some padlocks from a local Atlanta hardware store. They plant to chain the door and lock themselves into the Board of Trustee meeting.
Lock in protests have become a popular tool of activism. In the sixties, anti war movements spread around the country, and students would attach themselves to police cars, works of art, and even storm in the boardrooms to draw attention to their cause.
Beautifully manicured lawns sprawled over the Moorhouse campus. The administration wanted the grass to be kept in perfect condition. They placed giant chains around the grass to keep the students off the lawn. Those very chains were used to lock in the board of trustees. Okay, okay, okay, everyone relaxed. We don't have guns. We're just here to talk. This event was more than a simple protest. This was a call for action. The future of Morehouse and perhaps all
historically black colleges and universities, were at stake. These students were willing to put their entire academic future at risk for the chance to make change.
They wanted Morehouse to be part of a larger conversation. Martin Luther King Junior was just murdered that his father in Monkey Senior would be present as a member of the board. Truly, you understand what they were fighting for.
Ironically, the education at Morehouse encouraged students to take exactly this kind of bold action. To be a morehouseman was to be active and engaged. Right from the mission statement and I quote Morehouse College mission is to develop men who lead lives of service and leadership.
They want to develop men with discipline minds. They want to teach the history and culture of black people. They want to promote a sense of belonging for all. They prepare students for a rapidly changing world.
In the late sixties, it felt like the world was changing by the minute, and the men of Morehouse refused to be left behind. This takeover would be the first step in that process, a process for reform and change. At the epicenter of black intellectual thought.
This was more than a protest. It was a heist, a heist of ideas, and a heist for the future. But what is a protest? May twenty twenty, a world already made a one ten a century pandemic would again change forever. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, a forty six year old black man named George Floyd is murdered by Derek Charlott, an officer when an extensive record of razor complaints and brutality.
Please please are gave release please man, please.
On this day. The death of this man would create a worldwide movement against police brutality.
Unlike the nineteen ninety two Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, these riots would spread much like the invisible monster that was keeping us all in our homes. But this monster was protests. This monster was resistance. Any social distancing from this issue was impossible, and it brought people back out to the streets.
What is a protest? What does it actually need to resist?
Resistance in the Black experience go hand in hand. The uncomfortable connection to Black pain and the American experiment make some holidays and memorials awkward.
In the summer of toy twenty many of those memorials were burned to the ground. And of course, in times of turmoil, we live to our leadership to provide calm in the face of chaos.
Our nation has been gripped by professional anarchists, violent mobs, arsonists, saluters, criminals, writers, Antifa, and others. A number of state and local governments have failed to take necessary action to safeguard their residents. Innocent people have been savagely beaten, like the young man in Dallas, Texas who was left dying on the street, or the woman in upstate New York viciously attacked by dangerous thugs.
Small business owners have seen their dreams utterly destroyed. New York's finests have been hit in the face with bricks. Brave nurses who have battled the virus are afraid to leave their homes. A police precinct has been over run here in the nation's capital. The Lincoln Memorial and the World War II Memorial have been vandalized. One of our most historic churches was set ablaze. A federal officer in California, an African American enforcement here was shot and killed. These
are not acts of peaceful protests. These are acts of domestic terror. The destruction of innocent life and the spilling of innocent blood is an offense to humanity and a crime against God. American needs creation, not destruction, Justice not chaos. This is our mission and we will succeed one hundred percent. We will succeed. Our country always wins.
Well. I didn't help. For more detail in this event, I spoke with film Mark schum whose award winning film Police on Trial covered the murder of George Floyd in Chauvin's trial. He was one of the first reporters on the ground when the riots began in Minnesota. So, Mike, where were you when George Floyd was killed?
I was living in the Twin Cities in Minnesota when George Floyd was killed. In fact, where I was living was maybe less than eight miles from where he was killed.
Well, I didn't even realize you were that close to actually where it happened. Yeah, So draw the timeline of his murder versus like the date of the murderer versus when the the actual footage came out, Like what was that? What was the initial reaction just right there at ground zero in Minnesota to all that.
You know, to your point, I think even myself I was surprised at how close I was to where he was killed, because so much of how any of us were interacting with the world was through social media, so everything's spelt so close but also so.
Very far away.
And so when I was seeing video footage primarily across Facebook, actually being shared about George Floyd's killing, I didn't watch the video at first too quickly. I actually think my wife watched it first, and as she was watching it, I could just see her mortified, And so for myself, shortly after that I sat and watched it. I have to sort of when I'm about to watch disturbing material, I sort of have to rewire my brain for a second. So my initial watch of Darnella Frasier's video was shocked.
No doubt.
But then I sort of paused and sort of rewired my brain and focused a bit to see what am I looking at here? And I watch the entire video and it was, you know, nothing short of horrific. I was watching a man suffgate to death slowly. It's traumatizing for anybody who watches it.
The violence was so visceral, and it was also so organized. Show then his reaction and nonchalant attitude as he was you know, pressed against his neck, and there was the other cops organizing the crowd. Nothing to see here. It was the other human beings around saying, hey, it seems like you're killing that guy, you know, like it seems like the ignoring of that. It was such an interesting manifestation of all the elements of the human condition, right,
kind of all happening in one moment. You kind of saw the extremity of the state. You actually saw good Samaritans like, hey, that doesn't seem right. There was an actual first responder there saying, yeah, you're actually putting that you're actually killing that guy for you know, for a
non violent offense. All these things were happening at once, and I think at a time where emotions were high anyway, where we literally were facing kind of this invisible monster that had all kind of forced us into the house and had forced us to, i don't know, re evaluate our own social contracts in a lot of ways. That that was a really visceral thing to see at that particular moment.
I think there are a couple of things you said that was striking. The first thing is my god, I mean, if you think about it, we had only been sheltered in place for less than three months. It felt like years, but it was only less than three months. Lockdown started happening pretty uniformly, like March twelfth, March thirteen, something around then,
and this happened May twenty five. God you all right, But being relegated to the indoor and and sort of shelter in place was in its own way, its own trauma, right. And then everything we're watching is heightened everything you said about this sort of confluence of moments, people highlighting that these police officers were killing George Floyd. And more than that, this felt like protocol. There's a sort of this is
how we do things. Don't interrupt what we do, and yet bystanders felt the wherewithal to interrupt something that was clearly inhumane and clearly dehumanizing.
Almost two months since the eyewitness video sparked a global movement, today, for the first time, previously unreleased police body camera footage showed that George Floyd told officers at least twenty eight times that couldn't breathe.
It's one of those things you can't take out of context. Right when you just sit there and look at it, it's undeniable. Right then you see kind of the firestorm that it led to all over the world. So, speaking to your point, going back to what you talked about, in all of the different stories you've covered around the world, you've seen protesters put their lives in danger for their beliefs right there that they're taking it beyond just the hey, this is a geopolitical argument, or this is a this
is a matter of civics. You've seen people say, Hey, I'm actually prepared to die for this belief. What have you seen that brings a person to that?
To that point, honestly, there's I don't know that I have a very clear, straightforward answer to this, because this is something that I've been wrestling with for the better half of my life. I think a cause is broad enough to cover a lot of area. That is anger over an event, anger and frustration over an event like George Floyd's murder, and wanting accountability. The accountability is especially in that situation is deserved, was deserved. But what does
that look like is another question. I think about the Arab Spring and Egypt and Jussie Babarik and Atarier Square, where people just had enough and wanted to feel that there was agency. And I think that's the case, or at least a pattern across most social movements is this desire for agency and feeling disempowered. But then mobilizing and
protesting is a form of power. It's the power in everyone's feet to be able to come together and speak out to and against power in that sense, and that's I would say, that's a general idea of how I see people protesting and coming together.
Some resistance is planned like a heist, with elaborate steps and concise moments for peak attention. Keen understood this in Birmingham and Selma. He knew the images of unarmed black youth attack by a violent arm of the state with elicit rage.
Hey, I want to tell the city yourself, tell them doctor that we are not about to turn around. Yes, sir, we on the move now, Yes sir, Yes, were on the move and no way, but racism can stop us. Speak to my feet. Our God is marching on glory. Hallelujah, Colora, hallelujahujah.
Some resistance come from the direct defiance to the state.
Huey p.
Noton understood the power of seeing black men in leather coats holding legally purchased weapons. The image itself was the act of resistance. In twenty twenty, all of these elements came to a shocking collision. But the roots take us back to our story. The roots take us back to the A Building. Welcome back to the A Building. The demands for the locking would be simple and straightforward. Number
One a black studies program. By the late nineteen sixties, black studies programs were sprouting nationwide, but not at Morehouse.
Number two community involvement in the housing projects around Morehouse College. Morehouse students felt isolated from the growing metro Atlanta. They want to be seen as members of the Atlanta community.
Number three more people of color on the board of trustees. Morehouse College, the epicenter of black intellectual thought, was controlled by a predominantly board of trustees.
This had to change. Number four. The boldest request the creation of Martin Luther King University, the consolidation of the six black schools in the area to become one large university with a focus on black studies.
The take was clear, but the consequences of such an extreme measure could be devastating. One man learned the consequences of a simple act of protest. On September one, twenty sixteen, Colin Kaepernick took in me doing the national anthem of a preseason NFL game.
I mean, ultimately is to bring awareness and make people realize what's really going on in this country. There are a lot of things that are going on that are unjust. People aren't being held accountable for and that's something that needs to change. No, this country stands for freedom, liberty, just this for all, and it's not happening for all right now.
This act would set off a firestorm of controversy from the conservative media and even the President of the United States. Well you can imagine what Trump had to say about this.
Would you love to see one of these NFL owners when somebody disrespects our flag to say, get that son of a bitch off the field.
Right now out.
He's fired. He's fired.
Colin Kaepernick was by no means the first athlete to use his position to promote an important issue.
In December twenty fourteen, Cleveland bounds wide receiver Andrew Hawkins war shirt onto the field before the game against the Bengals. Hawk was called attention to two black o'hai ends guilt during an encounter with law enforcement. The T shirt read simply Justice for Timyir Rice and John Crawford. The move drew startain criticism from some, with local police labeled his protests as pathetic and demanding an apology.
Here's part of Hawk's elegant and touching response in conversation with the media the following day. I have a two year old little boy, and.
That little boy is my entire world, and the number one reason for me wearing the T shirt was the thought of what happened to Tamir Rice. Happened into my little Austin scares the living hell out of me, and my heart was broken for the parents of Tamir and John Crawford.
Knowing they had to.
Live that nightmare of a reality. So, like I said, I made the conscious decision to wear the T shirt. I felt like my heart was in the right place. I'm at peace with it. And those who disagree with me, it's this is America.
That's the point.
Everyone has his right to their first First Amendment rights. Those who support me, I appreciate your support, but at the same time, support the causes and the people and the injustices that you feel strongly about.
Stand up for him, Speak up for him no.
Matter what it is, because that's what America is about, and that's what this country.
Was founded on. We spoke with former NFL player turned pundit and media entrepreneur Andrew Hawkins about his protest and what came after. Andrew's really a pleasure to meet you. It's a pleasure to meet you guys as well. Appreciate you having me. Melick used to have a dream of being in the NFL.
Hawk I was a lowly Division III football player.
Yeah, it's as close as he's ever gotten.
So I mean, guess even the contextually, because I mean I remember this story of a big NFL fan, and I remember the backlash, but hearing your personal connection to the community and really all the things you were putting at stake. Do you remember the immediate reaction?
So I put my shirt on.
Just so happened that they were going to announce the offensive players this game, because it typically alternates offensive defense the starters, and so I was a starter, one of the last people to get announced. I come out with a T shirt on. All the pictures happened. We played a game, we get our ass kicked Johnny Manziel's first game starting. So it was like, I do you remember
Johnny manziel experience. It was like media everywhere. I mean it was every media there anyway, everything was there already and I hadn't even thought about that, but that's like what made it blow up. And so during the game, I guess it started to It started to take on its own life, regardless of even what's happening in the game.
And so afterwards it so.
I get dressed, I take a T shirt off after I wear it, throw it to the side, if somebody grabs it, puts it on my locker.
I get dressed. Afterwards, I'm headed home.
And the lead PR person for the Browns calls and He's like, hey man, we got a little situation, and so they were a little blindsided by it. There is a part of me that does feel, even to this day, bad about that, because you want to get even no matter where they sit, you want to give them the option to be prepared for what is happening next. And so things started blowing up really quickly. My mom was in town that night, and the calls keep coming in.
My phone's blowing up. I mean, I'm being called every name you can imagine on Twitter, on social media, you know, which I expected. I'm not reading it. I'm kind of letting it go, you know. So one call comes, the next call comes.
I'm getting blown up by everybody in the media.
The PR guy calls me back and was like, hey man, this is like, uh, we got it.
We got to do something. The police are.
Demanding an apology, they're threatening not to check the stadium, and I'm like, look, I'm not apologizing. I'm like I can, I'm gonna go. I'll come in tomorrow, I'll say my piece and go from there. And so I didn't sleep
that night. I stayed up, you know, me and my mom just talking and I kind of just started to gather my own thoughts, you know, and I wanted to be very clear, and I wanted to as much as I could explain what my thought process was to a point, but also just be very clear about why I'm completely okay with everything that happens after this.
Welcome back to the A Building.
Here's former NFL player Andrew Hawkins about his protest and what came after. As it blows up, blows up.
It's in USA today, It's on CNN, it's on Fox News, It's on you.
Know, Anderson Cooper, John Dally, I mean, you name, it is everywhere.
And so I come in the next day and I tell them I'm not answering any questions.
Get your cameras rolling. I'm just gonna save my piece and go from there.
And so I went on about five to ten minute, you know, talk, just trying to speak from the heart, trying to hit the points that I felt like were important to hit. I said thank you, and I walked out. And I think from there it took on an even like in some ways, like fire to it, and it even went even bigger than because now you had people from every side having a very strong opinion about whatever they had an opinion about So did you.
Ever get a sense as to why the police were offended?
I mean, I probably have my opinions. I don't know if I got a sense in the moment. Now, I am not, especially at this time, would not consider myself political whatsoever. Very rarely, if ever, spoke on issues that didn't pertain to Am I catching the first down to get this contract?
To provide for my family or not.
Not to say that I'm not passionate about these things, but I think in that moment, for me, it was so very clear, like, yo, I don't give a fuck about football right now, right, And that's just the fact and that like and I'm okay because again, like I tell you, my passion for football was not driven by money or me being able to sit in a certain spot. My passion for football was driven by exactly that, my passion for football.
And do you find that the audacity of that in itself offends people? You know what I mean, just the fact that this is what I think, because I feel like I think that there's an expectation and you see this in political discourse when it comes to athletes, where it's just hey, black guy, just be grateful. These people have given you all this.
Money money, yeah, to play football. You really shouldn't have things to say yeah, or you shouldn't have passion.
You should have passion for it exactly.
I think that is absolutely what the overwhelming feedback was to me in that moment, regardless of like, hey, and even I would say that in some ways, man as fucked up as it is. Even the people were that were in support, there was a tone of like, oh, you put a sentence together pretty well for a football pl you know what I'm saying, And I would don't like exactly, and so you know which again, and I even say and they're like, yo, if you support me, awesome,
appreciate it. Go do like your version of what this is. If you don't cool, you have your prerogative. It's a free country. I'm telling you what the hell I care about and what is most important to me in this moment. And if I make this decision now, I'm okay with everything that happens after it or whatever the consequences are. And as you would imagine, I mean, I got death threats. I had people tell me that they hey, there's you know, police are saying you better watch out, you know, your family,
everything in between. And I would love to be like that was such a surprise to me, But unfortunately, these are all the things that I thought about going into me making the decision. So in some ways I was okay with it, but absolutely the overwhelming narrative was like, you don't get you don't get.
To have an opinion.
Like, not too long after that, I end up getting like maybe wrap put on my front all my rims at a place in Ohio and I got rapp put on it.
I took my family to Tampa.
I would train in the in Florida in the off seasons, and so I went down to Florida and had my
car shipped. And what I would typically do is I would go a couple of days early, you know, get everything situated before I brought my family down to where I was and the car was shipped, and I pick up the car and I'm driving it back and to make a long story short, i start to hear like a squeaking of the wheels and I'm like, this is you know, it was damn near a brand new car at the time, like the first car that I even
bought as a professional athlete. And I had been in the league seven years, and I'm like this, this some typically, right. So I go to pool over and both of my wheels fall off, right, So I'm still not thinking anything of.
It, but my wheels fall off my car while.
I'm driving on the highway and I pull over right before the literally come off the axle. And so I called somebody, Hey, you know something, You know, I got some dumble withere, a must not or whatever, and he goes to you know, picks it up, takes to the shop. I come back to pick it up, and he basically not knowing who I am or anything, he was just like, hey, man, to be honest, I've worked on cars for twenty years.
I don't have no idea how this happens.
And he was almost like, not almost, he was insinuating like you would have to just start working on cars for the very first time for your wheels to be all four of your wills to be loose, like like like it would have to be your first time doing this, right, almost like I don't know who you got beef with.
I don't know who whatever, somebody was, somebody wanted to hurt you.
It's he basically was alleging like, Yo, this doesn't feel like, you know, unless you just had a friend do it.
Nobody who works on.
Cars would make this mistake. Now, what you can believe in, what you can prove with two different things, And you know, I'm very much like, Okay, I'll let God take care of them type of thing I called, and you know, I got I got in the ass a little bit. But at the same time, like from a public standpoint, I came into this knowing what could happen. I can't state enough how okay I was worth everything after that, you know what I mean.
So in retrospect, has anyone been like we were wrong? I don't know if anybody would say they were wrong.
One of the coolest things for me was in that moment the ownership of the Cleveland Browns. They called me into their office at some point, you know, and it was again I came into this expecting they were going to cut me if I did whatever, and their response was, hey, I'm very proud of you, and I'm like kind of took me back a little bit.
Like they're sitting there and they're like, you.
Did what you believed in, you know, regardless of what anybody thinks or where we sit or whoever sits.
A man follows his convictions. He stands on it, and he lives with it.
And you know, we wish more, just players in general, had that kind of mentality to take care of their own business, we'd probably be better off.
And I'm not gonna lie. That surprised the hell out of me.
That was so at that time, especially opposite of what the narratives were, you know, for people that were probably in my situation.
At any point, did you get any warnings or feedback that you might be in danger in the local community.
Yeah, Like I said, I mean, somebody you know pulled me aside and said, hey, I know so and so on. It's connected to this person. They're saying you better watch out man, like they're you know, And he wasn't saying it like threatening. He was saying it in like people are pissed type of thing. You know, you know, some singular person or some you know people want to do harm to you.
I'd want you to be aware that this could be a possibility. So yeah, in the height of the storm, in the height of the national tension, you're getting What was it like among your brothers in the league and that your brothers in the shield.
I feel like it was probably overwhelmingly supportive. A lot of the players were basically commended me because they understood or at that time what they thought was like, man, that is you took a risk, bro, Like you're risking all this money, You risking all this opportunity, You risking everything that you've worked for to take a chance to do something.
That has nothing to do with you, you know what I'm saying.
And I think a lot of them looked up to me in that way, and I've had I've had to this day people reach out in that way. I have an incredible relationship with Colin Kaepernett, and after that moment it was like kind of when we connected and he thanked me, you know, for speaking up, but also said like, oh, that took a lot of.
Courage, you know what I mean.
And we've been friends ever since, you know, because we had that kind of that shared passion even if in a moment to to speak out.
Do you think that your protest made a difference, I don't care.
I do not care if my protest made a difference. I do not care if Colin Kaepernick's protest makes a difference. I don't care if anybody's protests makes it different, and they shouldn't either, because's not what you create for. That's not what you play for, and that's not what you protest for. You do it because you care about it, and it's put on your heart to speak out.
And let the chips fall where you're made.
Because maybe that in and of itself is the reason. Maybe Colin seen some version of that, and it might have been like, Oh, I don't like what he did here, so I'm gonna do it this way. I don't like what he said here, so I'm going to say it this way, you know, and someone will see him.
I don't know what ten year old saw Colin.
Kaepernick taking a knee, and when they turn thirty, are going to, you know, contribute to whatever pushes things forward. But that's why it's important for you to let your passion drive you. Somebody needs to be the spark to sparks Martin Luther King. Someone needs to be to spark the spark Andrew Hawkins. Someone needs to spark Colin Kaepernick.
Somebody needs to spark Samuel Jackson, and who knows who Samuel Jackson in this story will spark you know, and I think like for me, I don't know if I made a difference, but I know from that point forward to maor Rights was national news.
Thank you for all the time giving us.
Appreciate you having me.
The Souls of Black Folks by W. E. B. Du Bois is a master text of Black American folklore. Du Boys lays the tracks for one hundred years of black intellectual thought. He emphasizes his relationship the Black American should have with colleges universities. He writes, the function.
Of the university is not simply to teach bread winning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools, or to be a center of polite society. It is, above all to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization.
In the intellectual beef between the Boys and Booker T. Washington, those lines were a lethal distrack Atlanta. This idea sits at the very core of being a more houseman. The bold act of a Locke in protest would be just what more housemen would do. It's what they were taught, just not against their own administration.
Mass protest is still the most effective way to fight injustice. However, the state has weaponized our right to protest against us. It has become a capital crime.
Chaos on the streets of Argentina, anti capitalist demonstrators rioted.
There are pockets of our society that are not just broken, but frankly sick, which I poor, get poor.
If you come, I want to do this thing, We'll do this.
Everything has been demolished and everything as ashes now well we want it.
To be as part of the solution.
But the protesters anger cannot be contained. The protest augments the immune system of any republic.
Next time on the A Building.
So in nineteen sixty eight when my uncle was killed, you want to know about that time and then the subsequent protest.
But Martin Luther King Jr. Who was not trying to divide anybody.
The A Building is produced by Imagine Audio for iHeart Podcasts. It is written and hosted by me, Hans Charles and my co host menelike La Mumba.
It is executive produced by Carral Welker and Nathan Kloke. Me menelik Lamomba and Hans.
Charles executive producers at iHeart podcasts are Katrina Norville and Niki Torre. Marketing lead is David Wasserman.
It is produced, directed, and edited by Timothy Fernarra, with producer John Asanti, sound design and music by Alloy.
Trex and special thanks to April Ryan, Doctor, Elia Davis, Kim vc Ada, Bobby know and James Early. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and review the A Building on Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast